A woman bled to death inside her on-off partner’s flat as she was allegedly murdered when he ‘fatally assaulted’ her during a violent s£xual act, a jury was told.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?
Tiffany Render, 34, was an ‘extremely vulnerable woman who was trapped inside an aggressive, violent and controlling relationship’ with 50-year-old Paul Irwin, Carlisle Crown Court was told today.
Before her death, Miss Render described being together with Irwin for 16 months, the pair living together since January, 2023.
On July 17 last year, she phoned the ambulance service while increasingly concerned about his conduct.
THE VIOLENCE
During that call, Irwin struck her multiple times with a wooden rolling pin, causing marks to her abdomen. She was also slapped to the face, strangled and had her hair pulled.
Police arrested Irwin, who was remanded in custody and punished for the violence by a judge last October. He received a suspended prison sentence and fitted with a booze ban tag until early February.
But later in February, Miss Render alleged that she had been assaulted again with a forceful kick to the backside by Irwin.
This, she told police, came against a background of his binge drinking, cocaine use, increasing control and repeated aggression towards her.
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COURT HEARD
Irwin, she alleged, exercised ‘full control’ over life, limiting access to money and contact with her children, interrogating her phone and telling her what she could and could not eat.
After the alleged February assault, Miss Render left his George Street flat in Whitehaven, Cumbria, and said she was told by Irwin he would burn photographs of her children if she did not return.
‘I have said to him if you burn those photographs then I will kill you,’ Miss Render told police. ‘He has then stated, “come up here and I will kill you, I’m telling you now that I’ll f***ing kill you”.’
Irwin was arrested after a complaint from neighbours. He was bailed with conditions not to contact Miss Render not go near George Street.
On March 4, Miss Render reported that he was continuing to contact her, making threats to ‘kick the s*** out of (her) because he wanted his flat back’, the court heard.
